


Don't Hang On

by treefrogie84



Series: Dust in the Wind [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depressed Dean, Depressed Sam, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, canon MCD, it doesn't stick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8319751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Dean's got one year to make a difference and make sure Sam is safe. Sam's got one year to save Dean, or at least his soul.
Episode codas woven in and around season 3.





	1. The Magnificent Seven

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I'd like to thank the lovely SolsticeKitten and [DorkilySoulless](http://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/dorkilysoulless) for listening to me work my way through this season.

A week after the Devil’s Gate, Dean might be willing to admit that they fucked up. That allowing a gate to Hell to open and several hundred demons escape was not the flawless victory over the Demon that he had hoped for. Yeah, the Demon was dead, but that’s about the only good to come out of it. There hadn’t been any ill effects so far, but it’s only a matter of time before things go all sorts of bad.

Not that it matters. The blame will end up at their feet anyway. Even if Dean had allowed Sam to stay dead, Talley still would have opened the gates, the demons still would have escaped, the war would still be starting. They just would also have one less good man on their side, one less capable hunter.

Word is spreading fast. The demise of the Roadhouse won’t stop the hunter grapevine, or even slow it down much. All it will take is a single demon mentioning the Grand Plan to the hunter sent to exorcise it and everything that Gordon had been spreading will flare back to life, fiercer for having been suppressed for months. 

The hunting community was already skittish, demons and monsters not seen in a generation suddenly popping up like mushrooms. Between Dad, Ash, and the five or six hunters Ellen says were in the Roadhouse when it burned, the US hunting community has lost something like ten percent of their number over the last year. Anything giving the survivors someone to blame will spread like turpentine.

Awesome. Just as well that Dad already burned those bridges because no one will ever work with them again. They’ll be lucky to not have hunters coming after them for revenge.


	2. The Kids Are Alright

Sam knows that not every ‘hunting’ trip Dean took growing up was solely for hunting monsters. As much as he and Dean shared on the road, driving for hours, there had to be some things that they didn’t share. Apparently this trip was one of the ones that didn’t feature into stories. Sam vaguely remembers Dean’s excitement about a trip by himself, Metallica playing in Missouri or something, he’d disappeared for about a week while Sam and Dad were cleaning up after a werewolf hunt down in Florida. 

Of course, Dean had met back up with them chattering about five states in five days, making it sound like he had just been checking for potential hunts while on his way to a concert, but yeah. If Dean is this excited about meeting up with a former flame, there was a lot more going on than just hunting and a concert. Possibly more than just a ‘bendy’ weekend even. Dad had pretty much abandoned them soon after, going on longer and longer hunts, Dean taking on parenting in name as well as fact. Maybe it isn’t surprising that Dean is excited about the possibility of meeting up with Lisa again- relive some of his youth in the face of mortality.

Sam closes his book. He’s not getting anywhere here, and the translation work he wants to do can be done anywhere. Might as well let Dean have his fling disguised as a hunt. Hell, maybe there is even something there to keep Sam occupied while Dean enjoys his sexcapades.

There has to be a way to beat a demon deal. Sam’s not going to let Dean die. Not when it’s completely Sam’s fault, because he was slow and trusted Jake. Dean’s the better hunter and the one who needs to be around. Sam’s not quite to the ‘find a crossroad demon and reverse the deal’ stage yet, but if he doesn’t find something soon, he might. Dean might think his inevitable end is a joke and a far off dream, but… Sam knows it’s coming, can see it looming across the calendar.


	3. Bad Day at Black Rock

Only Sam could manage to have the best luck in existence… for twelve hours. So far, nothing unsurvivable had happened, and it had even been a bit funny when he lost his shoe. But the accidents are becoming more dangerous, and Dean isn’t sure how long they’ll survive once they turned deadly. Sounded like Wayne survived losing the rabbit’s foot for about 30 minutes, and most of that he spent unconscious.

Sam’s already beyond that point. Had been by the time they’d managed to find a motel room (the third one they tried, apparently there was a convention that catered to the same sort of folk who used the same crappy motels they did. Because of course there was.). Dean was just counting himself lucky that the Impala hadn’t blown up while they were driving. 

But Sam’s tucked into the safest location Dean can set up. The weather is warm enough Sam doesn’t need the furnace, he’s under strict orders to not shower or go to the bathroom. As long as he stays put, there shouldn’t be anything that can kill him. Dean reaches over and knocks on the dash. It’s not wood, but particle board is as close as he has within reach at the moment. Like hell he’ll let his failure to observe some bullshit superstition be the reason the AC unit catches fire or something.

All the same, Dean’s breaking as many traffic laws as he dares. This Bela chick is clearly bad news and he wants to get to her before she has a chance to ditch town or sell the foot. He’s not sure what he’s going to do if it’s already gone, but he’ll come up with something. At least with Sam uninvolved, circumstances will be neutral instead of actively trying to screw him.


	4. Sin City

Sam knows better than to trust demons. That’s like the second rule in the family rule book: ‘We do what we do and shut up about it’ and ‘don’t trust monsters.’ Most of the rules that govern their little family can be summed up as some variation of those. Even though the second only applies to him.

After all, his dad and brother have trusted demons. That’s what a deal is: trusting the other party to keep up their end. One life for one death. And no, he can’t see what Ruby is getting in exchange for helping them, but seriously? How can he not try every option? 

His brother is going to Hell. Because of him. Because he didn’t watch his own back. His research isn’t getting anywhere: every demon deal he can find that was broken was broken on the demon’s end. Sam’s not closed down every avenue of productive research yet, but the obvious ones are done. So yeah. Ruby’s vague statements that she can help are better than the zilch he’s been getting.

Sam knows it has to be done. If he’s going to save Dean, he needs to accept help from anyone offering, regardless of their position on the good-evil divide. He just wishes that the help he’s getting would come with more details and fewer vague platitudes about ‘all in good time.’ 

They’re down to ten months. Ten months to find a solution, to find a way to keep Dean alive and top side. He can’t imagine that sending a Winchester to Hell is anything but sending a cop into the general population of a prison. A prize to be fought over until it’s completely destroyed. How long will that take, the destruction of his brother? Hundreds of years of torture backed by revenge. How many of the yellow-eyed demon’s compatriots would be going after him, are going after Dad right now?

Sam might not be able to do anything about Dad. But he’ll be damned himself before he’ll let Dean take the fall for his mistakes.


	5. Bedtime Stories

Dean remembered the book Doctor Garrison is reading his daughter. Every small town library for three states had the same edition, an edition he fumbled to read aloud to Sammy. Grimm’s Fairy Tales doubled as research, helped Dean remember the differences between goblins and imps, werewolves and black dogs. He loved reading them aloud to Sam, but they weren’t his. His authors would come later, after Dad started leaving them alone by themselves, with no adult to tattle about reading for fun instead of helping with research, training.

He knows _now_ that Bobby would never have said a word, was fighting with Dad to give them a stable home instead of raising them on the road. But when he was seven, it was too big of a risk. Who knows what Dad would have done if anyone had said anything? He was already a year older than his classmates, would Dad pull him out of school entirely if he didn’t focus enough on hunting and Sam?

Dean wonders occasionally how he had ended up playing the dumb one to his little brother’s brilliance. Why it is so easy for Sam to believe that he didn’t read anything but comic books and lore. Sam is undoubtedly smarter: his grades, dedication, and how he could pull the most random of lore from his head at the drop of a hat were all testament to that. But sometimes…

Sometimes Dean tries to forget how brilliant Sammy forgets who taught him how to read. How at seven years old, Dean walked to the library nearly every day they were staying with Bobby or Jim, anyone who could be trusted to watch Sam for a couple hours without Dad yelling at him. Dragging back books to teach Sammy how to read, because Sammy wouldn’t stop asking, wouldn’t let Dean keep secrets, not that one at least.

Reading had been both their escapes. Until Dad started moving them around so much that Dean couldn’t get a library card. Until he realized that hunting was going to be the only thing he was allowed to do with his life. So he kept bringing home books for Sam, every chance he could, bringing home whatever pulp sci-fi, non-fiction, Victorian Gothic, anything he could get his hands on… for Sam, but nothing for himself. Even when they were kids, it was obvious that Dad expected more for Sam than for Dean.


	6. Red Sky At Morning

Sam settled in for a long evening of research while Dean was off doing whatever. Sam wasn’t entirely certain if Dean knew what he was doing. He was drinking more, sleeping around more, spending less time focused on hunting and more on having a good time. Dean was finally living the life he pretended he did.

Sam glared at the notebook with all his research on demon deals. He was getting nowhere fast, or even slow for that matter. Particularly now that he knew that the deed had been passed on to someone else. Even if he figured out who currently held it, there was no guarantee he would be able to do anything about it. 

Fine. Time to look for a new hunt. 

As soon as he saw the article online, Sam knew that there was no way they weren’t going to take this case. The day Dean Winchester didn’t take a case about ghost ships was the day Sam checked his brother into a mental ward. He huffed a laugh as he shot Dean a text to let him know there was a case. He loved his brother, but some things were just so incredibly obvious. Sailors and pirates were only slightly less likely to get a reaction than cowboys. 

Ghosts were, relatively, easy to deal with. The only hard part was identifying the ghost. This time they even had more information than normal: ghost ship, rash of drownings on dry land. Should just be a matter of timing out the drownings, finding a shipwreck that fit the bill and burning some things. 

Or, as he looked at his search results, maybe not. Over 150 shipwrecks in about 300 years, most with no survivors. That’s… not what he wanted to see. Damnit. Ok. Start at the deaths and work back from there. Sam took a deep breath and started a new pot of coffee in the crappy motel room coffee pot. At least the new death certificates were publically available and easy to get into.


	7. Fresh Blood

Most hunters had nightmares about becoming what they hunted. One close call too many and a switch flipped in your brain. The standard ‘running through the woods at night with an empty gun’ nightmare became ‘ripping out your loved ones hearts and/or throats.’ Once that you had that nightmare, it was only a matter of time before you broke down. Dean had the dream for the first time when he was 16, running down Sam as a werewolf, ripping out his heart. He's had different variations in the decade since, always with the same result: Sam dying because Dean is a monster.

Maybe it was just Gordon’s situation getting it back into his head. Having to hunt down your family because they got turned is possibly worse than being turned yourself. Dean could see those nightmares in Gordon’s eyes every time they met. And now Dean is having the nightmares on Gordon’s behalf. Feeling his eyes flick black as he strings Sammy up on the ceiling, gutting him, setting the room on fire. 

He tries to hide the new nightmares from Sam. Waking up in a cold sweat, knuckles white where he has hold of the sheets, jaw clenched with strangled screams. There’s no time that can make these better. They are getting worse actually, as the year marches on. Bravado doesn’t help, Sam knows perfectly well when he’s lying. 

Dean finishes his (warm) beer, sitting against the wall on the bed, watching Sam sleep. Six months left. God, he wants to take Sam and leave. Take a permanent vacation, move someplace warm and sandy, spend his last six months being a beach bum. But that won’t help Sam or Bobby. Won’t mean anything in the long run. 

Instead, he’ll show Sam how to do basic maintenance on the Impala and pray that the kid goes back to Stanford. Baby won’t get the love she deserves, but Sam will understand. He’ll take the best care of her he can.

Time for sleep round two. Maybe this round will be relatively dream-free.


	8. A Very Supernatural Christmas

For as far back as his memory goes, Sam remembers Dad writing in his journal. It was the only book in their lives he _wasn’t_ allowed to read. And when he finally read it, sick of Dean’s evasion and worried about the lines around Dean’s eyes, he understood why.

He thumbs through it, again, while waiting for Dean to finish changing so they can go interview the family of the last victim. Everything in it is death. Mom’s death permeates the pages, especially the early ones, where there’s coffee and formula stains side by side with the occasional drop of blood. Sam’s grown since he left for school, he knows that Dad thought he was doing the best he could. Still, it’s heartbreaking to see how fast the man had gotten into hunting. To read the scant praise of his sons in the pages, more than they ever heard from his lips.

Sam’s lost count of how many times he nearly burned the thing in the past two years. Fire as a cleansing force. But Dad did one thing really well: getting other hunters to tell him all they knew. Generally, right before they tried to shoot him. The thing probably contains the collective hunting knowledge of half a dozen hunters, it’s much too valuable to burn. So many things in his life burn anyway, he shouldn’t voluntarily add another.

Christmas 1991 was the last time they even took notice of the holiday beyond seasonal hunts and Dean bitching about having Chinese food instead of a cheeseburger for dinner. As much as Sam would love to start celebrating again… it’s not going to be this year. Possibly never again. Not with a death sentence hanging over his brother’s head. 

It’s his last Christmas with a family. Last Christmas with a chance of normality


	9. Malleus Maleficarum

Dean’s pretty sure they’re always at their worst when dealing with witches. They’re always just so close to human, hell, they are human, and there’s always that desire to save them. But he has no idea how. Most witches have deals of their own with demons, far less honorable deals than his. Power for a soul, probably the most common deal of all.

Dean has always wondered if a witch’s deal was worth the cost. Is ten years of power or wealth or fame or whatever really worth going to Hell? But then, most of the folks who take that deal probably don’t even believe it’s possible when they agree. By the end though, they’re always irredeemable: corrupted by power and the steps necessary to hold onto it. It’s almost enough to make Dean believe in a higher power.

Because he doesn’t, even now. Yeah, souls exist, and Hell and demons. But anything positive? Not in his experience, or that of anyone he’s ever met. Mom believed in angels, look where that got her. And now, with Ruby’s confession…

Yeah. Dean knows where he’s heading in a few months. He knows what will come out. Knows that, at best, he can hope to be ground to dust instead of being remade. He’s terrified, and watching Sam change isn’t helping. If his brother thinks Dean is a cold blooded murderer, thinks that’s something worth emulating, what hope should he have? Sam always was the one who got that what Dad was doing was fucking them up, was demanding a chance to be a kid.

The final legacy of John Winchester: one son a demon and the other destined to lead a demonic army. Even if Sam keeps fighting on humanity’s side, a war like that will rip away his humanity even further. At least they’ll be together, Sam calling the shots while Dean acts as his sword. Always together, as they should be.

Dean shudders. No. Sam won’t give into his destiny just because Dean’s gone. He’s got Bobby and Ellen and Jo. They’ll be enough to remind him that he’s human. Right?


	10. Dream a Little Dream of Me

The dream always starts the same way. Bobby comes in from the yard, covered in grease and dirt, Karen kisses him hello. He gets cleaned up before dinner and is sitting down before everything goes wrong. Karen screaming at him, blaming him for her death, for allowing her to get possessed to begin with, nothing and everything Bobby’s ever thought after a few too many whiskeys or a bad hunt.

Dean and Sam are there too, more often than not. 

The boy’s faces, when they’re there, are blurry in a way Karen’s isn’t. He’s done this before, has this nightmare with almost monotonous regularity for decades now. He knows now what happened to Karen, he knows it’s a demon, that the last fight they had, somehow, caught the attention of a demon, possessing her and coming after him. It’s been thirty years and he doesn’t know why, just that it happened.

The entire thing is familiar, but he can’t change it, regardless of what he does. Dousing Karen in holy water, shouting the exorcism, prayer, apologizing. She’s forever possessed. The boys, which are both his and not his, are only rarely possessed, but never healthy. Sam bleeding out from a wound on his back, Dean missing his heart. 

He can never save his family. He can just watch as they die or try to kill him. 

Dean shows up, fully grown and whole, disturbing the pattern. Bobby had just burned Dean’s five year old body in the back garden, the physical ruins of a life burned too fast. Bobby thinks Sam is still alive, somewhere in the dream, in the attic playing with plastic army men until he too dies. Right now, he’s more concerned by Karen who gets crueller every time the dream resets.

But here’s Dean, grown, alive, helping him hold off Karen, even as Bobby himself is hiding in a closet. This whole thing is just a nightmare.


	11. Mystery Spot

On Thursday, Sam startles awake to Benny and the Jets. No Dean, the blood still staining the concrete outside their, his, the motel room. He searches all day for a way to reset back to Tuesday. 

It’s a week before the urge to murder everyone in this pissant town passes. A month before he stops expecting to wake up to Dean singing along to Asia. He’d been given back his brother over a hundred times and the expectation trained into him. 

There’s a brief moment of hope when Sam thinks that _maybe_ the Trickster killing Dean before his year was up means that Dean managed to avoid Hell. He’d be able to adjust to Dean’s death if it meant that Dean wasn’t in Hell. A brief moment of hope that lasts for all of two sentences before the latest lore book dashes it. No. Any death while under contract, even premature death, means Hell. 

For the first time, he sees how Dad became an obsessed bastard. Mom dead, the cops alternating between thinking he was crazy or the culprit, Sam and Dean too young to force him to step away from the edge. Dean had done that for Sam when Jess died. Supported him in his vengeance, but also forcing him to pay attention to the world outside of the hunt occasionally. 

Without Dean, Sam has nothing and he can feel himself spinning out. As much as he loves Bobby, he has his own life and hunts, can’t stay with Sam all the time. And honestly, Sam doesn’t want the company. He wants to ignore the world that has stolen everything and wreak vengeance on the monsters that killed his family.

Sam burned every bridge Dean had so carefully reconstructed with the hunting community in less than two months. He doesn’t have time for their bullshit. Werewolves or vampires can kill the rest of humanity if they want. Sam only cares about the Trickster. When he bothers to think about it, he’s appalled at what his life has become: roll into town in the Impala (which has a new rattle that Sam can’t diagnose and wouldn’t know how to fix even if he could), find the monster, try to get information about the Trickster’s whereabouts from the monster, kill the monster. Patch himself up. Move on to the next town, the next hunt, the next clue.

Sam keeps Cal’s gun in perfect condition, it’s probably in better shape now than when it killed Dean. It won’t kill the Trickster, probably won’t even hurt him. But it seems fitting to take a headshot using the gun that killed Dean, even if it’s followed up by a stake to the heart. The only thing he allows himself to care about any more. 

God, he misses his brother.

It’s been about 7 months when Bobby calls, says he’s got a line on the Trickster. Sam almost doesn’t go: what’s the point? Dean’s deal would have come due by now anyway. And even tricksters can’t beat Hell.


	12. Jus In Bello

It was a term Dean came across while researching as a kid. The very idea that war had rules, that certain acts aren’t morally permitted was weird. It’s not like the creatures he helped Dad hunt every day avoided civilians. 

But it stuck with him, he doesn’t know why. Probably the romance of it. The idea that only taking down enemies that struck first was a good thing. Dean liked knowing there were rules for at least some of the warfare he heard or saw nearly every day. 

Dean would never go so far as to say that monsters obeyed the rules of war. But they also, most of them, had never been human or could otherwise be excused. Lions, after all, didn’t avoid hunting ‘civilian’ antelope. Why would wendigos or kitsune? It wasn’t war, it was a hunting trip.

Demons, of course, had no compunctions against going after innocent civilians. Or involving them in a never ending war, destroying any chance they had of continuing their lives elsewhere. Knowing what he knew now, that demons had all been human once, just made that worse. How badly did you have to hurt and for how long, before hurting children seemed like a good idea? Of course all a demon did was destroy everything around them: crops, homes, lives.

The closer to the end of his deal they got, the more frightened Dean was of what that meant. Who would kill him when he came back as a demon? He and Sam, in over twenty years of looking, had only come across two ways of killing a demon: the Colt and that knife of Ruby’s. What if some other hunter had to be the one who put him down? Sammy would be gone by then; who else could be counted on?

The one thing the lore got wrong: angels aren’t real. He can’t count on Heaven to take him out when the time comes. A lifetime of defending humanity against its predators and he’ll become one himself. A top predator, with no regard for the rules of war or even a concept of it.


	13. Ghostfacers

Sam had the table covered in research materials as soon as Dean left for the night. They’ve been without a case for over three weeks. While Sam is making good use of the unexpected time off, they are getting mighty close to their deadline. Dean is getting visibly anxious again, drinking too much to outrun his nerves and sleep coming even harder than normal. So Sam is hanging up the deal research and trying to find something to do before either of them lost their minds.

Unfortunately, it looks like every ghost, vampire, ghoul, and wendigo decided to take the entire month of February off. Not a single weird death in their wheelhouse. A few deaths that look like something out of Mythbusters, but nothing hinky. Even Bobby didn’t have anything. 

Sam finally resorts to thumbing through Dad’s journal. He rarely wrote anything in there that he didn’t take care of before writing it up, but maybe. Ok. Morton House up in Wisconsin. It’s an option at least, even if it’s not a good one. A one day haunting every four years just isn’t terribly high priority and they’d barely have enough time to get up there and set up before they get locked in.

He puts it aside and keeps searching. But everything he finds is more of the same: nothing at all or hauntings that have been happening for generations. 

Dean rolls back in surprisingly early, only about midnight. He doesn’t look drunk or even like he had struck out. More like he had just gotten bored. “Please tell me you got something, Sam. I’m going out of my mind.”

Sam shrugged, “Every creepy crawly has apparently decided to take a vacation. So unless you want Morton House, we’re looking at more of the same. I was thinking about maybe heading up towards Bobby, help him out around the yard or something.”

“No, Morton House sounds good. It’s essentially the Grand Canyon for us, right? I know Dad didn’t even bother investigating it. So, let’s accomplish something Dad couldn’t.”


	14. Long-Distance Call

His life has never been easy, why start now? Of course the demon who holds his contract isn’t following him. No exorcism they have would kill it even if it was. But for a moment, one brief shining moment, Dean hoped. Hoped that maybe his dad did care, had worked out some sort of plan to save his son.

John had always been a complicated man, but his last act was to help kill Azazel. Before that, to trade his life for Dean’s. It’s not that Dean doubts that his father loved him, he just didn’t think John liked him very much. Too much reminder of what was lost, of happier times. So yeah, hope is for fools. If a literal demon, one on their side, can’t come up with a way to save him, why would anyone else?

It’s stupid to be upset. But the hurt of having the hope ripped away just brings everything into fresh relief. He’s going to die, painfully, in six weeks. Nothing to stop or even delay it. It’s gotta be something, being able to put an exact date on your death. It should be freeing. He knows when he’s going to die, nothing can alter it, so why isn’t he just out partying and having the adventures he didn’t have as a teenager? Isn’t that what terminal cancer patients do? Live it up until they can’t anymore?

But then, there’s no guilt with cancer. Your baby brother isn’t going to spend the rest of his life beating himself up for your death with cancer. Make your arrangements and then carry on. This… isn’t the same thing. Because Sam will never stop looking for a way to get him back. So they can just keep on this sick carnival ride. 

Always saving each other, just the way Dad taught them.


	15. Time Is On My Side

Sam just wants to not think for a while. Sleep would be a bonus, but not a requirement. 

There is no saving Dean and Sam is being forced to admit the truth of it. Dean’s been telling him that for months, for nearly a year, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Who would? Who wanted to admit, even to themselves, that they had gotten their brother a death sentence? Sure it was suspended for a while, some Sword of Damocles bullshit, but it was still a death sentence. And now… they are staring down hellhounds and dismemberment. 

All Sam wants to do is grab his brother and run. He’s not sure where they would run to, but surely holy ground would be a good place to start? Or maybe the answer is to not try. Just take Dean to Vegas, let him live it up for as long as he can. The problem with that plan is, of course, Dean wants to keep working. He’ll be the guy that works every day until he’s found dead at his desk. 

They have a name, Lilith, but no location or even a way to kill her. So summoning her is probably out of the question, or at least, won’t accomplish anything besides pissing off a powerful demon. The Colt is out of their reach, Ruby (or, more importantly, her knife) is AWOL, and no matter how hard he looks, Sam cannot find another way to kill a demon that leaves any contracts they own void. 

Four years of school, countless hours of studying and prepping for law school, and he can’t find any defense to get his brother off the hook. What is the fucking point of him living when Dean is gone? They’ve always been at their best when they’re next to each other (even if they’re fighting) and now…

And now, Dean’s going to be gone.


	16. No Rest for the Wicked

Sam spent hours trying to piece Dean back together, trying to make sure they didn’t leave anything behind. Bobby watched, waiting to wake up from the latest version of his nightmares. Eventually, he and Sam simply tear up a square of the carpet and roll Dean in it. 

They need to get going, they should have been gone hours ago. Sunrise was an hour ago, and soon people are going to start noticing that something is wrong in this quiet town. But Sam… 

Sam is barely holding himself together. He managed to hold on hope until the very end, bless him. Had still been hoping even as the first of the hellhounds tore into Dean. Few deaths were pleasant in their line of work, but this… this was one of the worst Bobby had seen in a long time. They load body into the trunk of the Impala and get on the road.

They’ve been on the road for about 4 hours when Sam swerves off the road, Bobby following more carefully in his Chevelle. He’d been expecting this for the last 50 miles or so. Enough time for the adrenaline to wear off, for the loss to really sink in. He grabs the axe he keeps in the trunk, ready to start felling trees for the pyre. 

Sam is still crying when he comes out of the car, although it’s possible he doesn’t even realize it anymore. “I uh... “ A deep breath as he visibly steadies. “There’s a coffin maker that does pine boxes about twenty minutes back. Says he’s got one ready, willing to let me use his tools to put the appropriate sigils on it. Can… can you sit with him until I get back?”

Bobby nods, even as he’s opening his mouth, “Sam, we should burn him. You know that’s what he’d want.”

“I’m getting him back. He’s dead because of me, in Hell because of me. I’m getting him back and he’s going to need a body when I do.”

“Sam.” But Sam’s expression is flat and mulish, so much like his father that there’s no point in even trying. “Fine. Let’s get going then. I’m not sitting out in the heat.”

An hour later, it’s Bobby’s turn to hold himself together, washing the blood and muck off of Dean’s form. He gently removes the amulet from Dean’s neck, the silver ring from his finger, anything he thinks Sam will want, before wrapping the body in clean clothes. This may be a damn fool thing, but like Hell his boy will go into the afterlife dirty and covered in blood.

Not that a little mud nor blood ever meant anything in Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *offers fuzzy blankets and warm cookies* I'm sorry. The show made me do it. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [](treefrogie84.tumblr.com>Treefrogie84</a>%20where%20I%20mostly%20blab%20about%20Supernatural%20and%20writing.)


End file.
